How Jaylan Foster grew at South Carolina in Shane Beamer’s first year in Columbia
Jaylan Foster grins as his gray hoodie covers his head.
He’s sitting in his living room in Columbia just a few days ahead of South Carolina’s on-campus Pro Day last week. The hope is he’ll show out for the scouts who didn’t find the All-American safety worthy of an NFL combine invitation.
But in this moment, Foster is reflecting. He’s thinking back to walking on at USC after a freshman season at Gardner-Webb University. He looks back at the uneasiness inside the program following the firing of Will Muschamp. He also recalls the culture shift that came in the wake of Shane Beamer’s arrival.
“To see (the culture) change right in front of your face, it’s like seeing your dog grow old,” Foster told The State. “You see how they grow every week and change, and that’s what it was like, honestly, because every week something was changing about the program.”
Turnaround for Gamecocks
That Foster, Beamer and the 2021 Gamecocks combined for a 7-6 season deserves all the praise it has received over the last three months. South Carolina, on paper, felt like a team destined for the SEC East cellar. Beamer’s group proved otherwise.
“Culture shifts” in college football are a dime a dozen. But Beamer spoke for months about the changing attitude inside the Long Family Football Operations Center. Foster assures those words and the sentiments around the team genuinely differed from previous years.
He notes how he and his teammates used to eat in the locker room in their respective nooks and crannies after practices. Under Beamer, players ate in the common dining area, forcing everyone to get to know one another.
When players showed up late to practice, they underwent their respective punishments. Over the course of a few weeks, people stopped showing up late.
Foster points to his first meeting with Beamer after his hiring in December 2020 as his own personal proof of concept.
He entered the office on the second floor of South Carolina’s sprawling football operations building with little knowledge of who his new coach was. Beamer’s first question, though, wasn’t about football. He asked Foster how his family was.
“You were going to war with guys and you don’t really know them,” Foster said of previous seasons. “I think that’s what made it so much better this year, because you were playing for guys that you actually knew. You felt you felt that energy, that love.”
Foster isn’t alone in his dealings with Beamer, nor the only player to offer insight into the shifting thinking within the Gamecocks football program. Defensive tackle Jabari Ellis spoke at Friday’s Pro Day about the positivity and progress he felt the senior class helped lay the foundation for upon their departures from Columbia.
Tight end Nick Muse added that the older players inside the Gamecocks’ locker room felt it right to buy into what Beamer sold and help South Carolina escape the doldrums of a down 2020 season.
Edge rusher Kingsley “JJ” Enagbare even chuckles when asked about his best Beamer story and the emotion he brought. He lights up describing Beamer jumping into his arms after a Nov. 20 win over Auburn and how he swung his head coach around in celebration.
“He kind of just jumped up in my arms,” Enagbare said. “We kind of twirled around. That’s probably my favorite moment.”
A career year ends on high note
Foster is a case study in the player development side of what Beamer and his staff have brought to Columbia over the last year.
The one-time walk-on entered the 2021 campaign having spent the bulk of his time at USC as a special-teamer and reserve defensive back. Foster evolved into the Gamecocks’ leading tackler, a co-leader for the national mark in interceptions during the regular season and a Walter Camp All-American.
In the months since his Gamecocks career concluded, he’s been training in Fort Lauderdale, Florida in preparation for the NFL Draft. Foster’s routine included workouts and on-field sessions from 6 a.m. until 6 p.m. most days. He concedes through a laugh it all starts to blend together.
“It’s a great lesson for our guys,” Beamer said of Foster’s unlikely rise after USC’s bowl win over North Carolina. “It doesn’t always just happen as a freshman or sophomore. You’ve got to work. There’s other great players here with you.”
South Carolina’s 2021 season wavered week to week. Wins over Auburn, Florida and UNC were matched by blowout losses to Georgia, Tennessee and Texas A&M.
Foster readily admits there were times USC didn’t know how to handle the successes it attained. That was, at least in part, a product of winning a combined six games over the previous two years.
But Beamer’s first fall in Columbia was one of validation.
Meeting one final time before the Duke’s Mayo Bowl, Foster explained how Beamer and his staff stood up and gave speeches honoring the super seniors who came back for one more season. The words were met with tears from those honored and offered a sense of accomplishment.
Twenty-four hours later, South Carolina steamrolled North Carolina for its first bowl win since 2017.
To Foster, that was as special as any moment.
“The ending was so surreal,” he said. “We won and we we treated it like it was a national championship and nothing anybody said could’ve stopped it. It was just so beautiful.”
